


Not Just Another Pretty Face

by SylvanWitch



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Fake/Pretend Relationship, M/M, Undercover Missions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-05
Updated: 2019-02-05
Packaged: 2019-10-22 13:02:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,711
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17663159
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SylvanWitch/pseuds/SylvanWitch
Summary: Draco Malfoy, on work release in the colonies, poses as Tony Stark's lover to lure a second wave of would-be Death Eaters with the promise of a deadly new potion.





	Not Just Another Pretty Face

**Author's Note:**

> The lovely Luthien answered my DW 15-character challenge with the following: 4 and 13 are in a fake relationship while on a secret mission. How does that work out? 
> 
> 4 is Draco, 13 Tony Stark. 
> 
> Thank you for the wicked inspiration. I enjoyed the hell out of writing this one!

“Must you?” Draco asked for the third time, surreptitiously moving Tony’s hand from his arse in order to avoid attracting attention.

 

As if it weren’t bad enough that he’d had to wear Tony’s jacket over his head to obscure his identity from the swarm of paparazzi outside and that Tony had been glad-handing the glitterati inside for forty minutes straight, alternating inane chatter and thinly veiled charity dunning with “What do you think, darling?” and “My sweetie here knows the _best_ people.”

 

It wasn’t as if Draco hadn’t majored in sycophancy in his youth.  He’d worn his share of plastic smiles in his day—his father’s tedious dinners, mother’s excruciating ‘garden’ parties (whereby ‘garden’ meant that they sat in the conservatory and opened the glass doors if it weren’t too bright outside for her).

 

No, he’d earned his NEWTs in toadying, right enough.

 

What Draco minded was the assumption that a pretty blond thing like him didn’t have a thought of his own.

 

It had been perhaps the most devastating revelation of his post-Hogwarts, post-Dark-Lord, post-of-the-manor-born life that Draco was considered _pretty_ by the sorts of muggles he’d have gladly stupefied for even looking at him when he’d been a prince of the realm.

 

Yet on the arm of a man like Tony Stark, whose wealth, gauche as it was, dwarfed his father’s (when they’d had it) and whose personal charisma was almost as bright as the blue light in his chest, well…Draco _was_ just pretty.

 

And it irked him that he wanted to be more than pretty, wanted someone (he wasn’t saying who, not even under pain of _Crucio_ , a pain he knew intimately and well) to look at him and see more than a piece of slender blond arm-candy with impeccable taste in couture and zero self-agency.

 

“Darling?” he murmured, leaning in, delivering the word directly into Tony’s ear with more hot breath than was strictly necessary.

 

Tony turned toward him, smile in place but eyes laser-focused, taking in the room over Draco’s shoulder, hand tightening on his waist—his actual waist this time, he was relieved to note.

 

“What is it, love?” 

 

They were, for the moment, occupying one of those strange bubbles of space that sometimes opened at a party around a couple or a small group, people who seemed to repel strangers with the same force they’d attracted them before, a kind of reverse polarity that emanated an intimacy too profound for intruders.

 

It was an odd effect, the sound of the room almost diminished, as if an invisible barrier had been thrown up around them, and he realized just how close they were standing, how Tony’s reflexive, protective gesture had turned him toward Tony and brought his pelvis up against Tony’s hip.  They were of a height, and were Tony to turn his head just a little more, they could kiss.  If Draco put a hand on Tony’s shoulder, pulled him flush, they could touch from toes to tongues.

 

He suppressed a shiver with the ruthless efficiency of someone who’d once shared a house with the Dark Lord and reminded himself that this was all a ruse.  They were here for a reason, one single purpose.  If he completed his mission, Draco could escape this room, this life…this man.

 

It was the last task he had to accomplish to finally be free of everything.

 

“We’re getting nowhere.”  The frustration in his voice had nothing to do with Tony’s maddening proximity, he told himself, and everything to do with the fact that they’d been there the better part of an hour and no one had yet approached them about the potion.

 

“Patience, Sweetcheeks,” Tony answered, sliding his hand down Draco’s arse, this time squeezing before letting him turn out of their impromptu embrace.

 

Draco shot him a scathing look and said, “I’ll be back in a few,” moving away before Tony could object.

 

He didn’t actually need to use the facilities, but the quiet of the hallway that led to the handsomely appointed bathroom gave him breathing room he didn’t know he needed, and when he pushed through the appropriate door, he was relieved to find a salon with leather couches and smoking stands and magazines and the other accoutrements of the monied class. 

 

From the inner door that led to the more functional room, the attendant gave him a respectful nod and left him to his brooding.  He dropped onto a couch and let his head rest against the back of it, closing his eyes for a few moments to center himself and regain his equilibrium.

 

Given the number of months he’d been working with the Avengers, Draco should have learned to master his body’s reaction to Tony’s proximity.  He wasn’t really Draco’s type:  Tony was infuriating, arrogant, stubborn, and completely obnoxious about his wealth and status.  He was just the sort of man Father would have called a “poseur.”

 

But beneath the workshop grime and behind the gleaming teeth, in private moments Tony allowed now and then—when they were tired after a job, or he’d worked for thirty-six hours straight in his lab, or when Draco had seemed to draw something out of Tony, some consonant spirit who recognized him, really saw him—now and then Tony was breathtakingly beautiful and far too good for Draco.

 

And it was maybe that last thing that most irked Draco about the whole perpetual hard-on he seemed to have for the man:  Tony reminded Draco of what he might have been had he not been so weak, had he not sold himself to the easier course, the path of less, if not the least, resistance. 

 

That Tony had stopped needling Draco about his restricted status, that he’d even seemed to empathize now and then with his own self-loathing over his responsibility for what had happened those last two years at Hogwarts—it was too much for Draco, who wasn’t sure he deserved redemption.

 

When the outer door opened, Draco heard it, but he didn’t bother to open his eyes.  He was tired, and the night had been especially frustrating, and he preferred to pretend he had no other obligation than to sit there in silence for a while longer.

 

He should have known his preference didn’t matter.

 

“It’s good that you’ve kept hold of that Malfoy arrogance,” the familiar voice said.  “Makes it easier to get you alone when you assume no one would dare lay hands on the golden boy.”

 

Draco wanted to point out that he wasn’t alone, but even as he formulated the words, he heard a muttered charm and the muffled thump of the attendant hitting the floor.

 

A second charm sealed the door through which the intruder had come.

 

Still, Draco refused to open his eyes.  He didn’t need to see the sneering countenance, the sick white hatred around the mouth and eyes.  He’d seen it a dozen times in the days following the Battle of Hogwarts, after the Aurors had descended on the Manor and he’d been separated from his parents.

 

Time and again he’d faced that look through charmed glass, identifying people he’d seen across his dining room table, in the hallways and great room and dungeons of his family home.

 

Time and again, the accused had given that rabid look of hate, twisted lips and glaring eyes accusing him of perfidy.

 

It had been the cost of keeping his freedom and his mother’s life.  At the time, he’d done it willingly, remembering the sound of muggle blood pattering on monogrammed linen tablecloths and hearing again the moans and cries that came up through the floors as though his home were already haunted by the anguished spirits of those imprisoned there.

 

That had been one cost.

 

The others had been exile to the colonies and a work furlough program with S.H.I.E.L.D., who was interested in expanding their “magical knowledge.”  Wandless, there wasn’t much Draco could do to impress Dr. Strange, who’d given him a once-over and then disappeared in a swirl of colored lights, and the Scarlet Witch treated him like he couldn’t be trusted, which was a fair reaction when one considered what had happened to some of the other witches he’d known.

 

“So, you’re the one who put out feelers for the Influenza Potion,” he said at last, tired to his bones of the whole predictable narrative.  A potion said to make its victims immediately and indefinitely vulnerable to suggestion and that could be atomized for airborne distribution was exactly the sort of honey that attracted a carrion fly like Corvid Yaxley.

 

“My father’s dead because of you.”

 

Draco couldn’t help the bitter breath of laughter then, though it earned him a sharp cuff on the ear.

 

“The same can be said of _my_ father,” Draco noted, looking up at last to meet the younger Yaxley’s eyes.  He was shorter and stouter than his father, but his eyes shared the same cold avarice, a churning hunger for suffering that he didn’t bother to disguise.

 

“Yes, that’s right, you little cunt.  You sold out your own flesh and blood.  What kind of monster does that make you?” 

  
Corvid held his wand with the casual confidence of a natural killer, as an extension of his hand and his will, and Draco felt the phantom weight of his own wand where it should be tucked into his sleeve, a visceral want tearing at his guts. 

 

“Still a better one than you are,” he noted casually, raking his eyes with deliberate disdain up the length of Yaxley’s body to the ugly snarl of his mouth.

 

Another blow, this one to his cheekbone, laying him out across the length of the couch.  Before he could right himself, Yaxley was on him, a knee between his thighs and the wand pressed hard into the soft tissue beneath his left eye.

 

Draco blinked away the pain, swallowed to try to clear the ringing in his ears, and considered his options, which were limited.

  
Fight back and probably die.

 

Lie back and definitely die.

 

Draco spat _Crucio_ and gestured with his right hand as if he had a wand in it, and Yaxley flinched, the tip of his wander searing a line across Draco’s throbbing cheekbone.  Draco threw himself up, the flat of his forehead smacking hard into Yaxley’s nose.  He felt it give with a satisfying crunch.

 

Yaxley yelped and reeled back, and Draco clutched his jacket lapels and threw his weight behind a shove that sent Yaxley sprawling onto the floor.

 

Draco was on his feet in seconds and had his foot on Yaxley’s wrist, grinding inexorably downward until Yaxley mewled and released his wand, which Draco recovered with an illicit thrill to have even this unfamiliar, unattractive wand in his hand.

 

Just as his lips formed the first syllable of a forbidden curse, the outer door was blown open with a muted roar that staggered him and made Yaxley curl into a ball and wet himself.

 

When the smoke cleared, Draco was standing over Yaxley’s shivering form with a wand pointed at a spot precisely between his fear-wide eyes.

 

“Oh,” Tony drawled, shifting his weight onto one hip, his glowing gauntlet like an obscene appendage. “I see you started without me.  Can I get you anything?  Drink?  Alibi?”

 

Draco shrugged, insouciant, and smirked for good measure.  “Yaxley here has a confession to make, don’t you?”

 

“Fuck you, you arrogant cunt!”

 

The whine of Tony’s gauntlet interrupted what Draco was about to say, and he caught Tony’s eye, shaking his head. 

 

“Fine,” Tony huffed, pretending at being put out.  The gauntlet powered down. “Why did I even need to come along?”

 

“Glad-handing the nouveau riche is really more your thing than mine,” Draco noted.

 

“True, true.  Alright, can you incapacitate him temporarily?  We’ll have a team pick him up.”

 

Draco’s smirk grew into a shark’s grin, and he answered by casting _Immobulus_ and _Silencio_ , with only a momentary pause to wrestle with the wand’s resistance.

 

“Hey,” Tony said, faux-admonishing, “Wait. Stop. No, you aren’t supposed to have that.”  He made a show of looking away, checking the attendant’s vitals while Draco stowed the wand out of sight.  Apparently satisfied that the man was none the worse for wear, Tony stood up and leaned against the inner doorframe, crossing his arms as the gauntlet went wherever it was he put it.

 

Considering that his trousers were snug enough to make a fair guess at his religious affiliation, Draco really had to wonder.

 

“Eyes up here, pretty boy,” Tony said, and Draco responded, but he took his time on the way up.  Maybe it was the adrenaline still coursing through his blood or the exhilaration of having a wand again.  Or maybe it was Tony’s warm smile and the frank appreciation he was giving back as he watched Draco ogle him.

 

Maybe it was even the prone and helpless body of his enemy stretched out on the floor between them.

 

Whatever the cause, Draco was suddenly tired of denying himself.  With the breathtaking arrogance for which he’d once been famous, he stepped over Yaxley without even glancing at him and closed on Tony.

 

Tony didn’t shift his stance or uncross his arms, but his lips had curled into a challenge and there was heat in his gaze.

 

Draco pressed himself against the barrier of Tony’s arms and licked his smiling mouth.  Tony’s quick intake of breath was gratifying.  The way he opened his mouth for the second approach even moreso.  Draco took his time with the kiss, learning what made Tony’s breath speed up, what made him drop his arms and drag Draco against him, what made his cock jump in his trousers.

 

When Draco was thoroughly satisfied and stunningly hard, he pulled back, happy to see that Tony’s eyes were dark and dazed, his lips red, cheeks flushed.

 

As Draco watched, Tony swallowed hard, and came back to himself with some visible effort.  He cleared his throat, loud in the over-quiet space, and flicked his eyes toward the door.

 

“So, what now?  You’ve got your wand back.  You could go.  Run.”  Tony said it conversationally, but this close, Draco could see the tension around his mouth, the wariness in his eyes that couldn’t quite hide behind his I-own-the-world smile.

 

Draco shook his head, dragged his tongue across his lower lip just to see Tony follow it with those worried eyes.

 

“This isn’t _my_ wand,” he said with every nuance of disdain he’d learned at his father’s knee.  “Besides, you’d only follow me.”

 

Tony shook his head.  “No, I figure you’ve earned your freedom, and this _is_ your last mission, after all.”

 

“You’d let me walk away?  Just like that?”  Draco wasn’t hurt, precisely.  He’d only been _pretending_ to be Tony’s lover.  He hadn’t fooled himself into thinking this attraction between them was anything more than temporary.

 

“Don’t get me wrong, pretty boy,” and Draco let the wand slip into his hand, his heart giving a little leap that it came again so naturally to him, the gesture itself and the posture of strength, too. 

 

Tony amended his words.  “ _Draco_ , I wouldn’t mind you sticking around, but far be it from me to keep you when you have better things to do.”

 

“Well, I wouldn’t say ‘better,’” Draco teased, letting Tony see a little of the heat he had banked from that kiss.

 

Tony smiled, made an inscrutable gesture with his hand.  “You could hang around until you get your official walking papers.  It’s not like I need your rooms in the tower. You’re welcome to stay as… you know…as long as you’d like.” 

 

And there was the man behind the self-made legend:  uncertainty, vulnerability, even hope, gods help them both.

 

Draco didn’t answer right away, and when he did, it was with a gesture rather than a word, the slightest nod of acknowledgement.  He might come across as arrogant, even cold, but the truth was that Draco had just realized he was finally free, beholden to no one, and his heart was in his throat, a prickling in his eyes threatening to betray him.

 

He turned away from Tony, taking a deep breath, moved around the remains of the door, and walked out into his future.

**Author's Note:**

> As far as I know, I made up Corban Yaxley's son, Corvid.


End file.
